The present disclosure relates generally to the field of aviation. Specifically, the present disclosure relates to a terrain awareness system, such as a terrain awareness warning system (“TAWS”).
Terrain awareness warning systems provide aircrews with information regarding the terrain. Standard TSO-C151b is utilized by the Federal Aviation Administration (“FAA”) to specify four functions for a terrain awareness warning system. These functions are terrain display, premature descent alerting, ground proximity alerting and forward-looking terrain alerting. Terrain awareness warning systems that use databases are subject to three basic error conditions including position errors from the navigation system (e.g. the Global Positioning System (“GPS”)), altitude or heading errors from the inertial sensors (e.g. the Altitude Heading Reference System (“AHRS”)), and terrain elevation errors from the terrain database.
What is needed is a terrain awareness warning system configured to detect conflicts between the projected path of the aircraft and terrain that is immune to navigation errors, inertial sensor errors, and terrain elevation database errors; and to provide alerts to allow the aircrew to more effectively determine the appropriate course of action during an aircraft flight.
It would be desirable to provide a system and/or method that provides one or more of these or other advantageous features. Other features and advantages will be made apparent from the present specification. The teachings disclosed extend to those embodiments which fall within the scope of the appended claims, regardless of whether they accomplish one or more of the aforementioned needs.